Impacts on Teacher Evaluations: The Importance of Building Capacity through Excellence in the Application of the Teacher Evaluation Process

Significant student learning and school improvement are dependent upon the teacher being the centerpiece (Tucker, Stronge, Gareis, & Beers, 2003; National Council of Teacher Quality, 2011). In maintaining the high standards associated with teaching responsibilities, educators are held accountable through performance evaluations. In the United States, teacher evaluations have long been a standard of practice largely determined by individual states and school districts. Additionally, teacher effectiveness has been guided by at least three pieces of national legislation, including the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA, 1965), the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB, 2001) and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA, 2009), also referred to as the Stimulus or Recovery Act. With the expectation that the nation\u27s universities produce higher quality teachers and school districts hire highly qualified teachers, the profession finds itself under constant, critical scrutiny, most recently concerning the evaluation of teachers

THE INTERIM SUPERINTENDENT: A CASE STUDY

Considering the vitally important role that the superintendent plays in the overall functioning and wellbeing of any school district, the filling of that position should never be done in haste. Due to the importance of this process and the time it requires, school districts often employ an interim superintendent. In this single case study, one researcher engaged in qualitative research by actually assuming the role of an interim superintendent in a small West Texas school. The findings that emerged from this study consisted of identifying duties and roles of the interim superintendent in comparison with those of the regular superintendent. Major differences were found in the roles of the two positions

Five Critical Skills Necessary for the Interim Superintendent in Texas

Schools are highly complex places (Goodall, 2013, p.121) and school district-level leadership is integral to student success (Bigham & Nix, 2011; Fertig, M., 2012; Leithwood & Jantzi, 2000; Norton, Webb, Dlugosh, & Sybouts, 1996; Robinson, Lloyd & Rowe, 2008; Wallace, 2002; ). Unfortunately, the mean tenure for superintendents is short - five to six years nationwide (Kowalski, McCord, Peterson, Young, & Ellerson, 2011) and three years in Texas (Bigham, 2011 ). Frequent leadership changes have the potential to disrupt the continuity of education for students in the school district. As these high level administrators move to other positions or retire, with them goes a wealth of understanding and expertise, hence, the need for increased emphasis placed on the most appropriate choice of an interim superintendent in transition to the permanent replacement

Randomized Controlled Caregiver Mediated Joint Engagement Intervention for Toddlers with Autism

This study aimed to determine if a joint attention intervention would result in greater joint engagement between caregivers and toddlers with autism. The intervention consisted of 24 caregiver-mediated sessions with follow-up 1 year later. Compared to caregivers and toddlers randomized to the waitlist control group the immediate treatment (IT) group made significant improvements in targeted areas of joint engagement. The IT group demonstrated significant improvements with medium to large effect sizes in their responsiveness to joint attention and their diversity of functional play acts after the intervention with maintenance of these skills 1 year post-intervention. These are among the first randomized controlled data to suggest that short-term parent-mediated interventions can have important effects on core impairments in toddlers with autism. Clinical Trials #: NCT00065910

Comparison of Four ChIP-Seq Analytical Algorithms Using Rice Endosperm H3K27 Trimethylation Profiling Data

Chromatin immunoprecipitation coupled with high throughput DNA Sequencing (ChIP-Seq) has emerged as a powerful tool for genome wide profiling of the binding sites of proteins associated with DNA such as histones and transcription factors. However, no peak calling program has gained consensus acceptance by the scientific community as the preferred tool for ChIP-Seq data analysis. Analyzing the large data sets generated by ChIP-Seq studies remains highly challenging for most molecular biology laboratories